Real Life Cinderella

Yesterday, I attended a meeting at a local Zonta Club and heard an amazing woman share her story--it was a Cinderella story of a young girl that was told in 4th grade they "girls can't become astronauts." In fact, an astronaut told her that! As she shared with her audience, she passed around a photocopy of the clipping from the local newspaper showing the class huddled around the astronaut listening to his story. In the article that accompanied the picture, she was quoted as saying, "I'll figure out how to sneak in."

Here she stood before us nearly 40 years later--living her dream of flying! She told about her courage and her determination and her simple prayer that God would open a path before her so that she could realize her dream.

Into her life came a WWII pilot that had lost his arm in combat. He took her to dinner and she eagerly waited to hear his story about flying this particular WWII fighter, but instead he asked her to tell him HER dreams. Never before had she verbalized them. This time she did. Five simple dreams--four had to do with flight and certifications and the fifth tagged on the end was, "I want to be married."

The WWII pilot opened the door for her to pursue her dreams. Her paid her expenses for two years while she pursued her training and certification.

The path had opened for her! Now if she could figure out how to repay his kindness.

Is there a dream you hold deeply in your heart--maybe it started in 4th grade? Can you go back there and find the dream, dust it off, and examine it with the wisdom of adult eyes? Then can you go back to the place where you dreamed it and watch it sparkle in the sun with 10 year old eyes?

Can you believe that if you take what you have--God will create a path before you?

Surprise ending--today she is the wife of this WWII fighter pilot and she says he is the most amazing person she has ever met in her life! In addition, her prince painted her nickname on the side of his beloved airplane--"Princess."

For Christmas, he gave her the key to that airplane and simply said, "Now it's yours!"

Still she sought to repay him for her kindness. How could she do that?

Today she is a flight instructor. One of her students is a young man from an African country who came to the US to learn to fly. Shortly after he arrived, his entire family was massacred. Their sawmill, which paid the freight on his dream, was destroyed. Today this young man is her protogee--the recipient of the wisdom of paying it forward.

Keep the dream alive! Someone will keep yours alive so you in turn can keep theirs alive. Directsales is a great place to practice paying the freight on dreams!